


The Arrangement

by kuutar (teapertti)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3561950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teapertti/pseuds/kuutar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later on, Jean noticed that cursed love affair was not that small of a price for economical freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Kurja juttu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2728433) by [teapertti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teapertti/pseuds/teapertti). 



> What could I say about this... Looking at this story feels like not being able to recognize my own child. (This is a translation of the original Author Notes. For the notes on the translation, see the end notes.)

The sea struck against breakwater somewhere, wave after a wave. It was said that the people who had been raised in the coast were different from people that were raised in the inland. That might be true; for Jean, who was from the inland, had never had any particular relationship to the sea. People might say to him something like: "Isn't the sea beautiful?", but to him it never evoked any special sentiment. At least not before the night he had left a party with Armin. They had walked along the beachfront and both of them had felt great confusion inside their minds. Armin had held his hand while walking ahead, and Jean had not resisted, partly because his brain didn't function properly and partly because Armin insisted that _he had promised._

Armin had pressed himself close to Jean's side and breathed heavily. Jean hadn't struggled or tried to escape; he had listened to the sound of the sea and wished that instead of that place he had been in his dark room, listening to the night programs from the radio. But right now he was at the mercy of Armin; he had led Jean to a very dim beach cabin that had only one window. Jean was feeling uncomfortable, he felt Armin's weight on him and fell to the hard bench. Armin seemed desperate when he was undressing his shirt. Jean felt how his body was paralyzed, and thought by himself that the experience must feel to Armin similar to making love to a life-saving doll. Jean had done what he was told to do, shut his eyes and imagined being somewhere else. The boy's hands had felt cold on his thighs, somehow the slithery touch and the compulsive squeezing had lingered on his skin long after, coming back to him whenever he heard the crashing of waves.

However, even more clearly than the touch on his skin was the look of Armin's eyes as they hung over him, glowing and gleaming with desire, engraving themselves into his memory. For some reason or another, Jean had thought of the alligators he had seen in the place he used to live when he was little, of their yellow eyes glimmering above the water when they had stalked their prey. Armin's eyes, round and blue, had seemed the same to Jean; under his ceaseless gaze Jean had been a captured prey. He had held the trembling boy from the shoulder and prayed that everything would be over. He wished that this reincarnated crocodilian animal would go away so he could go home and drown himself in the bath tub or the like. But Armin wanted to be with him till the daybreak; after satisfying his most urgent desires he had lain over Jean and listened to the beating of his heart.

On that morning when Jean had walked home, knees feeling weak, he had thought of the day he had met Armin for the first time in the library. They had gone to different schools back then: Armin lived in the suburbs and attended a school with a good reputation, and Jean lived in the inner city and was in a school where the teachers had lost their faith in the future of the students ages ago. Their paths might have never crossed if on one fateful day Jean hadn't gone to the library and happened to hold the book Armin wanted to borrow. It had been five years ago, back then Armin had been probably the smallest thirteen-year-old he had ever seen, merely a child. The book had been some kind of young adult novel; Jean still remembered the bright orange cover and the title "The Age of the Morning Star". They had begun to talk to each other, and something had connected them from that very moment. Perhaps it was the same rootless existence and the feeling of being an outsider that constantly accompanied some people.

The memory faded from Jean's mind when he opened the front door of his home, suddenly feeling a very fundamental disgust.

After a week had passed, Armin appeared on his front door, smiling bashfully and prettily like an innocent school boy. Jean's mother adored Armin; his well-cared skin, his expensive clothes and other factors that signaled his good living standard.

"You've got the face of an angel! So cute!" she marveled when the two of them stood in the hallway. Jean wanted to point out that even angels might fall, for Lucifer had once been an archangel.

"Your son is very lovely, Ms. Kirstein," Armin said and smiled at Jean over his mother's shoulder. Indeed, beautiful words were the serpent's means to make Eve bite the forbidden fruit. Jean stayed in front of the door to his room. Armin understood the gesture and told Jean's mother that he would briefly go to have a small chat with her son. Jean closed the door after the boy had slipped into his room. However, he didn't move away from the door but kept his hand over the handle. Armin wandered around in the small room for a moment; he opened some of the drawers, lifted the stuff that are on the top and dug out a candy box made of tin. He peeked inside.

"I suppose you're in debt," he said emphatically. Jean felt uneasy. Even mild drugs became expensive, at least for a person like him. By allowing himself to be disgraced by Armin, he had afforded to pay them for now, but he would soon run into more debt. He wished he had never started.

"Not everyone was born rich," he muttered under his gritted teeth. Armin ignored the scornful comment and inspected the things laid in front of him for a while, before turning his gleaming eyes to Jean. Armin formed his suggestion slowly, and somehow it further enforced the excitement boiling under his words:

"If you were mine, you wouldn't have to worry about these things." Jean squeezed the handle of the door and looked at the boy who stood in front of him, the one with the blonde hair and beautiful face, resembling a figure painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But the face hid so much, just like the sleeves of the costly flannel shirt hid the ugly, unsightly wounds that ran along his arms. Jean took a deep breath. An easy life free from debt, he thought. It was obvious that Armin was from an entrepreneur family, for he sure knew how to do business. Jean's fingers departed from the door handle and stretched forward; he stepped to face Armin and grabbed his chin gently, planting a kiss to his red-tinted lips. The boy flinched like he had gotten an electric shock. However, Jean quickly pushed him away and looked over his shoulder.

"Go, I'll see you later," he hissed into Armin's ear. Jean seized the other by the shoulders and started to walk him towards the door. Armin seemed bewildered for a moment, and he obeyed without saying a word. When passing the door, he seemed to regain his sense of reality. He smiled from the corner of his mouth and put his hand to the back pocket of Jean's jeans. Jean gritted his teeth together.

"Don't...! My mom will see," he said and rushed to the hallway. Armin put shoes on his feet and stepped over the threshold. They stared at each other for a moment; Jean felt like Armin's eyes – _the eyes of a beast, the eyes of a serpent_ – wanted to devour him. _Tomorrow,_ he formed with his lips and closed the door.

*

"I just can't get you out of my mind." Jean remembered how the words had flooded out of the phone, how they had twined around his neck like a hangman's noose. He couldn't get Armin out of his mind either: when he closed his eyes, he saw his burning gaze ahead of him, felt the small tip of his tongue in his mouth and the fast, reptile-like fingers on his hips. They met each other in Armin's home, for his parents were working almost around the clock and so he was there mostly by himself. The house was enormously big, dreary and empty. Jean hated moving around in the rooms that were dim and silent, as if there was no one living there.

There was a huge table in the kitchen, carved from dark wood. A day from years ago returned to Jean's mind, a day from the previous life of theirs where everything had been different. Armin had asked him to watch movies with him. The summer had been at its hottest, and a storm had risen in the evening. The power had gone out, and an unnerved Armin had dashed to the kitchen. Jean had followed him and became surprised when he noticed that the kitchen was empty. When a strike of lightning illuminated the sky, he had noticed Armin sitting under the table, hands covering his ears. Jean had crawled there to accompany him. It was a struggle to do so, because he had just recently had a growth spurt. They had sat next to each other silently; Armin had sobbed.

"I'm afraid of thunder..." he had been able to mutter. For Jean it had been both pathetic and endearing. He had wrapped his arm around Armin's shoulders and thought of the boy, who had tried so hard to stay strong in this rugged world, who had back then held the power to fight against it. Armin had leaned closer, and for a fleeting moment Jean had felt a fluttering feeling inside him. He could have fallen in love with Armin Arlert then, even before anything harmful had happened.

But something in the universe had decided differently, and now after many years Jean stared at that very same table, and the past felt like a dream to him.

Jean tried to return home every evening, for he didn't sleep well in Armin's wide bed, with his possessive hands around him, surrounded by his lust. Jean lay still until the morning, stared at the ceiling and waited for Armin to wake up and say that he wanted to have sex with him, or go to school and leave him alone.

He felt how the spacious and well-lit room shrank around him; suddenly it was difficult to breathe. Jean turned to his side to look at the boy sleeping next to him. Nowadays he liked Armin the most when he was asleep, dwelling in a place where his obsessions couldn't reach him. For a while Jean reminisced about the times before lies and despair. No road led back to Paradise.

He was startled when he felt Armin's fingers squeezing around his arm; he had woken up. Jean stroked his golden blonde hair with his hand, for he knew that it made the boy happy. For a little while it would make him feel like someone loved him. Jean didn't condemn Armin for that wish, for he was just a human, broken and lonely like everyone else. He watched as the eyes opened slowly from the depths of a down pillow. The hold on his arm tightened, it was desperate and fearful, as if the other was afraid that the prey would escape at any minute. His fear was relevant, for Jean could go away any time if he wanted to.

Armin yawned mouth wide open, and then lifted himself on his elbows. He inspected Jean's face for a long while, then reached out to stroke his nose with slow, caressing motions.

"You've got the most beautiful nose in the world! Even Cleopatra would envy you," he said and a small smile appeared on his rosy mouth. Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, Jean thought. In that case, Armin would Sobek, the crocodile-headed guardian of the Nile. Or perhaps more like the cobra whose bite killed the queen. Jean caressed his cheek and Armin crept closer. His eyes glowed like coal.

"You know what I like most about you? Your sincerity," Armin said and moved his finger absent-mindedly around Jean's bare chest. He was quiet for a moment and then continued:

"Even if I promised you whatever you might want, you wouldn't lie to me and say that you love me, for we both know it's not true." Suddenly Armin looked sad; the truth must wound him from the inside like a slash from a knife. Jean felt agitated.

"When we're together, you seem so unhappy! But without you, I'm so lonely. What a lousy arrangement! I wish we could both be happy," Armin fretted. Jean reached out to kiss him, as if it was a reward for this wretched realization.

"Life is cruel, but luckily one doesn't have to suffer it alone," Jean stated and turned his gaze away. A life in lie was better than life alone, he added inside his head. Armin looked thoughtful and moved his hands towards Jean's neck; the fingers danced on the hollow of his throat.

"I love you so much! I wish we could always be together..." he whispered with a hissing sound in his voice. Jean felt the touch of the nails on the skin of his neck and sensed the sweat breaking out.

"That's not true and you know it. If you loved me, you couldn't live with my unhappiness," Jean replied. Their eyes met. Armin whimpered from rage and his eyes shone like those of a beast that had noticed his prey; his fingers felt heavy as lead on Jean's throat. For a moment Jean feared that Armin would strangle him, tear him to pieces, thus finally destroying the beauty that kept him captive. It was okay, for Jean was ready to die, as it would allow him to escape from here.

"I guess it's like that, then," Armin said and rose. Jean watched as he took his shirt and started buttoning himself in it. A small, scrawny figure that looked almost too fragile for this world. An angel that had sinned like a man. The one whose heart was swarming with the beasts of the jungle and the marshland, who kept looking for the path he come from. There they waited for the opportunity to tear him apart. And so they would do, Jean thought. Slowly, day by day, piece after piece, the two of them would break each other and walk hand in hand towards their shared destruction.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, thanks for user Aespren for patiently helping me with this one. This translation follows very much the original Finnish text, except for the title which originally translates as "the miserable story". Among my fics, this I perhaps thematically most complicated, but hopefully I've managed to do a translation that transmits the ideas I had while writing this text.


End file.
